The Graff Library catalog has a new look–and over 4000 electronic books. We have updated the branding in the catalog, modernizing it and making it look more like our web site. We’ve also redesigned the top-level page (see the screenshot above) and search results pages to make the catalog easier to use.

But the changes are more than skin-deep. We have also added over 4000 records for electronic books to the catalog, making them easier to find. Previously, our electronic books could be found only on our Online Journals, Books, etc., page and could only be searched by title. Now they can be searched alongside our print books by author, title, subject, keyword, and more. We still have more electronic books to add to the catalog, but within a month or so, we hope to have them all in.

Here’s an example of a catalog record for an electronic book:

Just click the Connect to link to access the full text of the book.

Please let us know what you think of these changes. We want all of our tools to be useful and user-friendly.

Students and researchers may be interested in Scitable, a new biosciences site from Nature Publishing. According to the site:

Scitable “brings together a library of scientific overviews with a worldwide community of scientists, researchers, teachers, and students. Use Scitable to

Learn about a range of scientific subjects

Collaborate online with other students and teachers

Publish your activities and portfolio to the worldwide science community

Maintain an evidence-based online coursepack for your students

Scitable features topic rooms with articles, people, and discussions related to a key concept in science, as well as groups (“virtual study spaces”) and personal profiles. Major topic areas include genetics, cell biology, scientific communication, and career planning.

Andrea Lynch, Scholarly Communication Librarian, will spend next week at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, taking an intensive course in biomedical informatics sponsored by the NIH. She will work alongside medical educators and administrators, studying principles of database design, human-computer interfaces, medical terminologies and coding systems, medical decision analysis methods, clinical information systems architectures, methods for measuring costs and benefits in health care systems, use of the Internet for biomedical applications, current and emerging wide area network technologies, use of literature and molecular sequence databases, and systems for telemedicine.

Please join me in congratulating Andrea on her admission into this highly competitive fellowship program!